A controversial metro Atlanta police shooting of an unarmed Paulding County man goes before a grand jury Wednesday amid questions about whether a key eyewitness will testify.
Emelia Blehm said she was just a few feet from Brandon Bohanan last October when her unarmed friend held up his hands and tried to surrender to Paulding County sheriff's deputies in the basement of his mother's home. She said as many as five armed deputies burst into a bedroom where Bohanan was trying to hide from authorities.
“You shot him?” she recalls asking deputies seconds after a single shot hit her friend in the face. “Why did you shoot him? He had his hands over his head.”
Blehm, 37, said she has not received a subpoena to appear before Wednesday’s grand jury and hasn’t spoken to investigators since the day of the shooting. She said she spoke to investigators with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation briefly that day at the Paulding County Jail.
Paulding County District Attorney Dick Donovan gave evolving statements about Blehm's status.
In a phone interview Tuesday, he said that she had not been called to testify. Later, he said Blehm is among the eight witnesses his office has subpoenaed to testify but that his office can’t locate Blehm. He said they’ve been to five past addresses, and suggested Blehm was on the run to avoid arrest for outstanding warrants in Cobb County for theft by receiving and heroin possession.
“She’s dodging us like crazy,” he said.
Donovan chose not to present the grand jury with an indictment for consideration — signaling its unlikely charges will be filed against any of the officers. Instead, Wednesday’s hearing will be a civil grand jury hearing in which jurors will likely make a recommendation to the district attorney.
Civil grand juries
District attorneys in Georgia frequently turn to civil grand juries in fatal police shooting cases instead of choosing to seek a criminal indictment, giving political cover to these elected law enforcement officials in controversial cases.
If there is no prosecution, a district attorney can turn to the grand jury decision as justification. Donovan disagreed. He pointed out that the process he is using was approved by the Legislature. It calls for a transcript of the closed-door grand jury process after the case is complete.
“The civil grand jury was intended not necessarily to give the district attorney an out, but assist the district attorney in making sometimes difficult calls,” Donovan said.
The AJC and Channel 2 Action News located Blehm through attorney James Dearing, who is representing Bohanan's widow, Michelle Bishop Bohanan, as she considers a possible lawsuit.
Michelle Bohanan said her husband did not own a gun. He had been in jail before, but was trusted by his jailers. Many deputies knew him and were friendly when they’d see him in the community.
“For them to do this, I want to know why,” she said.
Dearing said he has tried to speak directly with the Paulding district attorney’s office, but they have responded only via email.
‘Pow’
Blehm spoke to reporters on Tuesday at the Midtown office of Dearing’s co-counsel. She said she’d been living in Hiram.
Blehm said deputies had come to Bohanan’s mother’s home to arrest someone else. But when they learned Bohanan was home and had outstanding warrants they tried to apprehend him.
Bohanan, 35, and Blehm barricaded themselves in Bohanan’s basement bedroom in hopes deputies would leave.
She and Bohanan watched on a security monitor as a “swarm of officers” gathered.
Deputies used a battering ram to slam the bedroom door.
“It was very loud and the house was shaking,” she said. “I was terrified.”
After about 20 minutes Blehm said she saw sheet rock flying through the air as the battering ram tore up the door frame.
“I was like, ‘They’re coming in. Do something.’”
Bohanan, who moved slowly from a recent motorcycle accident, had a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, she said. Just as three to five deputies were about to enter, Bohanan stood up, his hands in the air, and tried to surrender.
“He said, ‘Hey! hey!’ trying to get their attention,’” she said. “Then they came in and I think one officer was saying ‘Get down on the ground,’ but he didn’t even get through that sentence before you hear, ‘Pow.’”
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